Pastoral Summer Piece

There is a lake in my neighborhood where I take my walks and swims now during summer. During these moments I have collected some themes which I have put together in this classical piano concert for small orchestra, only strings, percussion, clarinet and flute.

My intention was to make it pastoral and I would be glad to get your opinions.

I listened to this twice. This is quite pleasant! You have a good sense of melody, which is somewhat rare it seems to me among modern composers. I also like your chords, they fit in with the overall theme as you describe it. If there is one thing by way of critique which I would offer, it is that the tone, volume level and overall feel of the piece is continuous from beginning to end with not as much variation as I would have liked to have heard. I found that as the piece went on, I was hoping more and more to hear something which contrasted -

Thank you Gav, also for your constructive advice. I believe this result of less variations, apart from the themes, may be due to what I associate with pastoral, calm and smooth experience. But nature may of course be lively but not so often by our lake. But for this rather long piece one could of course expect something new to happen, instead of merely repeating the first half. Lately I have started to compose shorter but more content rich tunes, which I believe is more in line with modernity. These long repetitive tunes may be more appropriate at older times when live performance was the sole alternative.

Nice to hear from you

Kjell

Gav Brown said:

Hi Kjell,

I listened to this twice. This is quite pleasant! You have a good sense of melody, which is somewhat rare it seems to me among modern composers. I also like your chords, they fit in with the overall theme as you describe it. If there is one thing by way of critique which I would offer, it is that the tone, volume level and overall feel of the piece is continuous from beginning to end with not as much variation as I would have liked to have heard. I found that as the piece went on, I was hoping more and more to hear something which contrasted -